Tuesday, March 11, 2014

With Facebook engage directly with customers to improve sales

With social media, it feels easy to get sucked in and find yourself having spent four hours watching videos of guys tossing dough without having done anything productive to help your own pizzeria. So, what are the takeaways if on a limited budget and without a staff to handle the onslaught of various social media options?

A recent study found that there is only one good use of Facebook, to engage directly with customers. The study states that broadcasting, or just general posts, are somewhat pointless. Direct interactions are what can influence sales. And user-generated content influences sales more than your own marketing. So, how to work with this? Encourage customers to review your pizzeria on Facebook. Share their positive reviews.

Spend time searching for comments on your pizzeria on varying social media and thank people when they provide nice comments. Perhaps provide them a coupon or free pizza upon their next visit. Encourage them to bring friends.

The survey provides these tips:

If you can do only one thing on Facebook, encourage information rich interactions between your users, both direct and indirect.

If you can do two things, interact with users directly, and stay positive when you do.

Recognize that while positive, indirect interactions have the strongest influence on sales, all information rich interactions help improve sales, and both direct and indirect interactions play crucial roles for different reasons.

Be sure to also check out this great blog post about getting your Facebook post up to date. Learn about the most creative ways to use a cover and profile photo and hashtags.